That holds true for most people, but sometimes you are dragged into something you don't want to. For example, if you are minding your own business running a convenience store and some guys come in with guns demanding money, and out of fear for your life, you shoot first and kill one of them. Now you have to spend the rest of your life in jail for something that you never premeditated or wanted to have happen.

That has happened before. And even weirder cases where the family of the criminal has sued homeowners that shot for killing their family member.

Heck, firing at someone in your house may or may not be legal - it's legal if they present to you a threat to you or your family, but not if they're unarmed, retreating, etc. So shooting a guy going after your family is legal, but if he's running away with his back to you, it's not.

And even worse, given it's a really busy few seconds, no one is really sure.

Two, 20 years ago MS actively encouraged copying Windows and users sharing those copies for free. Bill Gates actually said something along the lines of "it's better for people to use pirated copies of Windows then to buy the competitions software"

What a change from 20 years previous to that where the infamous Bill Gates' Open Letter to Hobbyists was released where he decried the open sharing and "piracy" of his software.

Yes, I know about the NAVAIDs, but they identify at 5 WPM and the airman's charts print the dots and dashes next to the waypoint. And there might still be runway aids that say a few letters, also at 5 WPM, but it's always the same letters for left and right and the outer, middle, and inner marker. Pilots learn the sounds for each.

Until you try to read them in the dark. I printed out a cheat sheet of nearby navaids with the dots and dashes enlarged, because a red lamp has the ability to fade them out.

In fact, pilots are not expected to know Morse code - they are expected to use the dots and dashes. So much so you can actually get in trouble with a CFI if you DO happen to know Morse. Then you have to explain, slowly, to them that yes, you did identify the station - you didn't look at the chart because you know what it was supposed to be. But yeah, it's a good way to fail a checkride

And I expect Morse to be continually used as it's more user-friendly - if you're tuning up a navaid, the beeps will go into the background if you're interrupted by ATC. If they used voice then it's highly annoying trying to separate the two without hitting buttons on your comm panel.

It's rumored that a big part of the reason Apple has stuck with one-button mice is that, if you're not relying on context menus, multiple buttons are largely unnecessary for normal productivity uses, and not having multiple buttons deters developers from putting important functions in context menus.

That's actually a big part of it.

By having a single button, UI designers are forced to expose features somewhere somehow, which allows for exploration. You can have a context menu, but everything in it must be accessible elsewhere.

Because on Windows, some poor UI designs are such that you get a blank window, and that's it. If you want to do anything, it's right-click this, right-click that.

Heck, Microsoft even has shift-right-click and alt-right-click exposing new options. (Shift-Right-Click, "Open Command Window Here" is so useful...). Now just how is a user supposed to realize that modifier-clicking does stuff too?!

They wanted to drop water but couldn't because of the drones. Why, they were afraid they'd damage the drones in putting out a fire? Solution, drop water on the drones.

I'm sure helicopters have to deal with birds sometimes. These drones don't appear to be that durable or heavy, are you telling me that the propeller blades can't handle these little things without causing a disaster?

I am not a drone owner or user... but I just can't believe these things are that hazardous to an aircraft the size of a helicopter. Am I very very wrong here?

It's not the hazard, it's the potential hazard.

Let me set up the firefighting environment.

You're in an aircraft. Could be a helicopter. Could be an airplane (single engine agplanes are commonly used). You're flying low to the ground, because if you go too high, the effectiveness of your water/retardant/foam drop diminishes significantly. So you're having to fly in a narrow band of altitude above ground. You can't go up - lowers the effectiveness, you can't go down - reduces your spread, and again, lowers the effectiveness because you're not covering as wide an area.

OK, now we're near the fire. As everyone knows, heat rises, and fires generate a lot of it. This makes for wicked turbulence as you fly - it's extremely difficult maintaining attitude ("blue side up"). You've got to fly this path to lay your water/retardant/foam in the planned area, with air upsetting your aircraft and making it hard to keep a straight line (i.e., straight and level flight).

You're concentrating making your location, dropping your load (which alters the CG of your aircraft - in some, they will pitch up as they get lighter, in others, pitch down, and you must correct for this as you're dropping. If you don't, your chances of crashing are basically certain).

In other words, it's already a hard job, and now you want to add avoidance to the mix? I mean, if you're dropping, and a drone comes up, that could distract the pilot long enough to do the wrong thing. Or it could hit the aircraft and damage a prop, at a time when the workload is high.

I did mention you were already low to the ground, right? So if you have a problem, you can't fix it - and if you can't fix it, you're going down. If you're lucky, there's a crew nearby who will come to your aid in your crashed aircraft. If not, and you land in flames, well, hero down.

But I'm sure it was all worth it to be on YouTube, right?

And that's the real danger - it's really turbulent, so drones are no match for the wicked air currents. There's a chance that "harmless drone" far away could be gusted right into you, perhaps damaging a control surface (and it doesn't take much - the aluminum bends really easily).

Plus, it's high workload - you're already busy enough flying, you really shouldn't have to worry about other aircraft in the area. (And you don't - there's an aircraft flying overhead that manages the airspace so you will not encounter another firefighter accidentally. That control aircraft schedules every helicopter, agplane, waterbomber, etc., in sequence so as to allow the pilot to just concentrate on their job - dropping their load at the right place and right time).

Since this is /., how about a work analogy - say you have a deadline coming up and you need to finish your module by that time. In a normal environment, you're given the alone time you need to concentrate because it's tricky, and it's due end of the day. Drones are more like those coworkers and your boss asking you to come into a meeting, or bugging you every 10 minutes with a question. That's why drones are so dangerous - they're distracting and their potential for harm is heightened because of the urgency of the task at hand.

And in the end, really - it's all just so some idiot can have something cool to post on your YouTube channel.

And FYI - the airspace around a wildfire is restricted airspace - no aircraft allowed, including RC hobby aircraft, drones, etc., that are not authorized to be there. The FAA advisory circular is just that - advisory. It is not law, and anyone violating restricted airspace can be subject to criminal prosecution.

Hell, I'd enjoy if the insurance companies of those with burned up cars went after the drone pilots to recoup some of the damages.

HELL, while you idiots were sleeping the entire rest of the world (minus Apple) warmed up to the idea of remote desktop technology. If you are bound and determined to gut that, then you are giving Linux a competitive disadvantage and setting it back 20 years.

Sure, remote desktop rocks. But they also are superior to X. For example, if your network connection burps, you don't lose your f'in work. Because the app runs locally and is displayed remotely and is completely independent on the network.

Sure remote X is great, I use it all the time. But I'm also aware that if I start a long-running process, I need to use screen to keep it alive, because now I'm depending on three things - the Linux machine hosting the app, the network, and my desktop PC showing me the app. That's a recipe for fragility in the whole thing.

Perhaps you don't use remote X for things that take hours to run, or don't mind losing all your work because you forgot to save and now the network connection reset. That's fine and great. But some people do, and really, X is pretty deficient compared to the rest of the remote desktop protocols out there. Even VNC.

Remote X is great, but it's time to modernize it and put features that every other remote desktop system has.

I'd still rather have them do THIS when the systems aren't too popular than have some random swatter roll a minivan with 5 kids because he mistyped the IP address of the guy who just beat his speedrun. (Where "THIS" is a controlled test.)

And what if the random swatter T-boned you in your car?

Sorry, public roads are not for "testing". There's a reason why car ads all say "Professional drivers on a closed road" - because you can seriously injure someone else.

Hell, these security researchers not only put themselves at risk, their entire occupation, DEFCON and anyone else a decent lawyer can say was the cause of it (including GM).

Is it a problem? Yes, a serious one.
But you don't have to put the general public at risk to demonstrate it.

You can demonstrate the problem just fine in a closed controlled environment, like say a parking lot. In fact, it may even be more impressive, without scaring the crap out of the driver OR the drivers around him.

In fact, you can even demonstrate it without a driver - override the brakes so you keep the car stopped, have the driver get out, then drive around. A nice, safe, controlled manner that turns it from "security researchers who put everyone's lives at risk" to "security researchers demonstrate they can take over any GM vehicle...".

How you tell the story is just as much as important as what you tell. Do it the wrong way and the how can easily overpower the what.

They're just lucky nothing bad happened, because the message would be quite a bit different if someone got in an accident, and DEFCON would go from "security researchers meeting" to "hackers like Anonymous set to destroy the world" in the mind of the public.

You could think up many possibilities as to why this is, and I'm sure that a lot of it is waste due to medical businesses (e.g. insurers) being run for-profit. But I think it's pretty clear to all sane people that you don't just cut funding and hope everything works out.

Actually, a lot of it IS dealing with insurers.

In a single-payer system like in Canada, you bill the government for every patient. In out, easy. It's estimated the paper handling costs for this are around $20K or so per year for doctor's office - be it a single doctor, a partnership, or whatever. Just a standard doctor's office.

But in the US, where you have to deal with non-payers, and dozens of insurance companies each with their own idiosyncrasies in billing and what is actually covered, it takes roughly $60-80K to deal with all that paperwork.

So yes, there's a lot of waste in the system, and it's not just because insurance companies are making a profit (guess what - in Canada, you can by extended health insurance that covers above and beyond what is "free" - e.g., vision and dental care, private or semi-private wards at the hospital, etc).

While those lights on keyboards are technically outputs, they're only indicators and you won't be outputting actual data with them. Not with standard hardware anyway.

Incorrect. The state of the lights on a keyboard are independent of the actual keyboard state.

When you hit caps lock, num lock, or scroll lock, 2 key codes are sent from the keyboard to the computer - one for key down, one for key up. The computer processes it and updates its internal keyboard state tables. The processor then writes to the keyboard to tell it turn the LED on.

The keyboard controller does not, nor does the keyboard, update the LED without the main CPU being involved. It's a great way to test if your OS is actually working (because if the LEDs don't update, it means the main OS crashed or is too busy to handle keyboard input).

Linux uses them to indicate it's panicked as well - if all the LEDs blink, it means the kernel has halted.

But they are fully software controllable and you can use them as an input and an output mechanism. Perhaps use it to show status of something, for example.

Companies won't adopt 10 in large groups for quite awhile. That coupled with zero day vuln's which are bound to happen, it'll be patch Tuesday every day! Don't forget a brand new browser too.. After all today MS15-078 another zero day, critical was released out of band. Let chaos reign.

Corporate PCs don't use Patch Tuesday. They get all the patches and the PCs update themselves from WSUS or other software update mechanism.

Only home PCs update themselves willy-nilly. Corporate PCs have had the ability to schedule and approve updates.

You can blame Google for this one by having their inflexible 90-day bug disclosure thing release details on a bug that was being patched in a few days. Yes, Microsoft had fixed it, scheduled it for Patch Tuesday, and boom, Google tells all a few days prior.

So yeah, thank you Google for now getting Microsoft to host our PCs every day, instead of just the second Tuesday of the month.

Apple Watch is still a solution in search of a problem.

No, the problem is real, just artificial.

The problem is that people are buying big-ass phones with big-ass screens, which is great if you're playing videogames or watching movies. However ,they didn't buy a game console or a media player, they bought a phone.

And then they realize just how inconveniently big it is if you want to stay in touch or in the loop. So now they can't put their phone in a convenient location, so they put it in their bag, or one of the few pockets on their clothes that are big enough, which tend to be out of the way.

Which makes it really hard to get to, for someone who must check for texts on a minute-by-minute basis (FOMO - fear of missing out). So they demand a solution, and we've got smartwatches to solve it. No more FOMO - the smartwatch will tell them when they get a text, or a like on facebook, or a tweet or dozens of other things so they don't have to dig out their phone unless they absolutely have to.

Most people though, just buy a phone of the right size to begin with, seeing how the 6"+ is beautiful, but results in something unusuably large. This is a particular problem in Asia, where numbers rule, so they buy 6" phones because 6" is better than 5.5". (iPhone sales stats have it around 1:6 ratio of iPhone6+ to iPhone6 in North America, which drops to around 1:3 in Asia)

I'd be really surprised if the actual hacker(s) really had any moral stance one way or another. My money would be be on just pure financial greed. They see AM and it's customers as a paycheck. They see AM as a source of money and are applying pressure directly on them to pay up and/or shut down. They also pressure subscribers to pressure AM from the other side to pay up to not reveal their information.

In the end I think it will be a loss for the hackers and customers. The hackers aren't going to get their money. AM takes a PR hit but doesn't really care because they already run a website for people with questionable ethics/morality. Customers info might get released, but for the 3 people that are actually real, married, and their partner doesn't already know, the shit might hit the fan. For everyone else, no one cares. And if you're a paying subscriber to a cheating website with your own real information, you're already a fucking idiot and get what you deserve for being a dumbass.

Actually, you're underestimating the impact. The information you have on AM would be perfect for blackmail. And I'm sure you can find some rather large and high-powered people to whom the release of information like that could be deadly - either professionally or politically.

You might think everyone having an affair is doing so with their spouse's full knowledge, but that's unlikely to be the case. I'm sure a tiny percent of those are in open marriages, and maybe a slightly larger proportion are doing so with the spouse's knowledge.

AM is not for people "dating" or "looking for a companion" - they're specifically for people already in a marriage to commit adultery. And this isn't the sort of "let's just get a prostitute" thing either.

So yes, the release of information is potentially devastating, and a good proportion of those marriages will end in divorce, while the others will probably end up with said spouse being a slave.

There may be no money request now, but I'm sure once the offer to shut down is refused, the hackers will be contacting everyone one of those 37M people and asking them for say, $10/month to keep quiet. Not too much to bother police about, see, but enough for a large and steady income.

And yes, the amount is important - ask for too much and the "punishment" for revealing you're an adulterer is probably not as bad. Make it a small amount and most people will just pay for the silence.

Heck, even the hint of a potential affair will drive some marriages on the rocks. Even if there was no one night fling - just having your spouse know you were looking puts you in the doghouse of distrust. (And no, this isn't gender specific - men AND women who were cheated on are equally vindictive to their partners).

I know when I first saw the ads on TV (regular mainstream TV, I know AM has been around a long time, but their profile has been quite low), I knew they would be a perfect hacking target.

Much as hate to appear victim-blaming, even an utter polyanna-style naÃvette would've ended at $3,000. Beyond that, it is stupidity.

"He" (and am not at all sure, there is an identifiable "he" to this scam â" more likely a work of an enterprise) is a crook and should be hung alive by his rib on a rusty hook. But, boy, the lady is stupid...

Yet people throw billions, if not trillions of dollars away in "gambling" every year.

And we're not talking "let's spend $20 on the slots to pass the time for fun", it's "let's spend $2,000 to turn it into profit". Hence why I said "gambling" and not "gaming" or "entertainment". (If you want to know why slots are called "gaming" machines, that's why - they're for entertainment).

So yeah, that would include a lot of "intelligent" people who play the lotto or go to a casino for anything other than fun. So I guess we're pretty much all stupid because face it, few people actually win. Especially in the end since those that win small usually gamble it away again.

This lady fell for a scammer in the same way billions of people fell for the scan of get-rich-quick.

Will they be have to be melted together to prevent cracks between segments for weatherproofing against rain, snow and ice? (Water expands when frozen, remember)

Actually, modern road construction pretty much demands that all water drain through the road, rather than just drain to the side. The reason is that if water collects on the surface (which it does even when the road is peaked as they should be), it can form ice and you end up with black ice during the cold days.

It also makes the road shiny and makes your headlights reflect away from you, making it even harder to see the road markings on those rainy days.

By peaking and making the asphalt drainable, the water doesn't collect on the surface, so you avoid black ice and the road appears drier in the rain so you can see the lane markings and other things much easier.

It does, however, lead to pothole issues as the aggregate bed below it shifts more. But it's one reason why modern paved roads are far quieter (the airiness also does a number to reduce tire noise), and far easier to drive on.

It happened quite recently, so you can still see the difference - parts of the road are nasty and hard to see and slippery, while other parts are quiet, easy to see and has good grip, In the same weather conditions.

Formalizing the meritocracy a bit: How about a "consumers' union" [no relation to the org/mag] website that works like a central clearing house:

- Any member can post a boycott request, with an explanation as to why: bad product, invasive advertising (popups, etc.)
- Members upvote the request by signing on to the boycott
- No downvotes to prevent astroturfing by the advertisers
- With enough votes, all members agree to boycott the product/advertiser for the given period (say 1-5 years)

Why not just stop buying ANYTHING then? Apple products will be the first boycott (yay Apple haters). Followed by Samsung, HTC and other Android products (yay Apple fanbois). Then we'd have boycotts of Nokia products (yay Microsoft haters), Etc. etc. etc.

That's the problem - "the wisdom of the masses" is really quite dumb. We've seen this through Google bombing (every one of those "type blah into Google then click "i'm feeling lucky"" is an example), reddit (if you have an unpopular opinion, you're going to get downvoted to obvlision), even /..